: Opentype feature for controlling double- or single-story lowercase "a"? Is there an Opentype feature that controls whether the lowercase "a" glyph is shown as "single storey" or "double storey"?

@Phylliss782

Form the list of Registered Features, you could choose:


Stylistic Alternates (salt): "[...] alternate glyph designs for a purely aesthetic effect.", or
Stylistic Sets (ssxx): "In addition to [...] stylistic alternatives of individual glyphs (salt), some fonts may contain sets of stylistic variant glyphs corresponding to portions of the character set, e.g. multiple variants for lowercase letters in a Latin font. Glyphs in stylistic sets may be designed to harmonise [sic] visually, interract [sic] in particular ways, or otherwise work together."


So, if the 'a' is the only variant, I'd go with 'salt'.

As for the other, specific question, Candara has double-storey for roman, and single for italics. This is a common choice since the italics is suppose to be based on a "stylized form of calligraphic handwriting".

APPENDED: Candara has also an Oblique version, as the OP remarks. I understand the original quest is trying to get a double-storey 'a' in the italics, and the OP also suggested substituting the oblique 'a' in the italic text. Unfortunately, italics and obliques (at least in this font family) don't have the same slanting angle, and the substitution may look weird. Unless the italic face of the Font Family has a specific double-storey stylistic alternate, I guess there is no way to add a double-storey italic in this typeface ( without much trickery :P ).



EDIT: related to the article you mention from FontFont -- for example, FF Unit lists in this page that the 'a' stylistic conversion is in the salt and ss01 features. Other FF fonts also handle it similarly.

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@Lee3735518

Stylistic Sets would be the feature that would make more sense in a case like this, where you want to change the style of one or several characters. However, this feature needs to be coded when making the font. If the creator has not included both the glyph (the lowercase italic two-story a) and the functionality you will not be able to create it in a word processor /graphics editing app just by turning on the OpenType feature. If the creator has included the glyph but not the opentype feature, you can manually replace the glyphs you need.

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